1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of performing predetermined working operations on a circuit substrate, such as an operation to mount electric components (including electronic components) on the circuit substrate, to fabricate an electric circuit, a system operable to perform such working operations for fabricating the electric circuit, and a control program executed by a computer to perform the working operations for fabricating the circuit substrate.
2. Discussion of Related Art
An electric circuit is commonly fabricated by an electric-circuit fabricating system, which includes a solder-paste applying device, an adhesive applying device, an electric-component mounting device, an automatically inspecting device, and a re-flow furnace device, which are arranged in a line in the order of description from the upstream side toward the downstream side. Each circuit substrate loaded onto the system is successively transferred through those working devices, and a predetermined working operation is performed on the circuit substrate, by each working device, so that the electric circuit is fabricated.
In some of such fabricating systems, each of the working devices is operated on the basis of specific information indicating at least one specific characteristic of the circuit substrate on which the working operation is to be performed. The specific information may be obtained by reading some form of an indicator provided on the circuit substrate. Where each circuit substrate has a plurality of working areas in which respective working operations are to be performed, for instance, the specific information includes area-position specifying information which specifies the positions of those working areas relative to the circuit substrate, namely, the positions of the working areas within the circuit substrate. To obtain the area-position specifying information, an imaging device is provided, for example, to take images of fiducial marks which are provided on the circuit substrate and which indicate the positions of the individual working areas. In this case, the area-position specifying information is obtained by processing image data indicative of the images taken by the imaging device.
In the conventional fabricating systems, each of the working devices is arranged to obtain the specific information on the circuit substrate, and perform the predetermined working operation on the circuit substrate, on the basis of the specific information obtained by itself.
In some fabricating systems, some specific information indicated above is the same for two or more of the working devices. In this case, the conventional system arranged such that each working device obtains the specific information by itself suffers from a relatively long time required to complete the fabrication of the electric circuit and an accordingly low production efficiency due to unnecessary repetition of the operation to obtain the specific information on the circuit substrate.